Ping Anser Forged Irons must be the ideal iron

The Anser is forged remember, from 8620 'carbon' steel, which makes impact feel softer than it does with cast irons. Non-golfers and beginners will think you demented for saying there's a difference, but those who have hit hundreds of thousands of Cheap Golf Clubs shots will certainly perceive it. Impact and compression just seems to last that fraction of a second longer. The sound is slightly deeper, less pingy.

As for performance, the first thing to note is there is no loss of forgiveness. ping anser irons are still largely considered the tools of the scratch golfer who worries less about how an off-center hit is going to behave than he does about how all his on-center hits are going to feel. But as you'd expect from a Ping club, bad contact is not heavily punished.

The look is a cross between a classic forged iron with the thin lines and narrow sole and a cast iron with a little thicker top line and a wider sole. I tryed other forged irons from Ping such as cheap rapture v2 irons I love and while they are great forged irons they are also harder to hit consistently. The Ping Anser Irons give you a great blend between forged feel and cast forgiveness; these will be in my bag for a long time to come.

The tungesten weight in the sole makes it easy to get the ball airborne, though I didn't notice the ball flying significantly higher with these than with irons with similar lofts. The sole is wide enough to prevent digging, but not so wide you can't hit stinging, penetrating approach shots.

Ping Anser Forged Irons have less bounce than is common (the 3-iron has -3° of bounce while The Anser 7-iron has 5°, the cheap razr x irons 6°) which means you can nip the ball of fairly tight lies and out of bad lies easier than you probably can with your present set.

The lofts are quite strong - 46° for the Pitching Wedge, 33.5° on the 7-iron - but if that doesn't work for you, you can always bend the face. I'm fine with it. There are a few golfers at either end of the ability spectrum for whom the Ping Anser Forged Irons will either provide insufficient game improvement features and playability, or too many that sacrifice workability. For the vast majority of us in between, the Anser might be the ideal iron and is definitely worth testing.